This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: We revisit some of our favorite interviews from the past year. Topics include: war powers, banned books, the Koch brothers and the incredible journey of veteran turned pacifist Rory Fanning.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: We revisit some of our favorite interviews from the past year. Topics include: war powers, banned books, the Koch brothers and the incredible journey of veteran-turned-pacifist Rory Fanning.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Robert Scheer connects the dots on surveillance, the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership could break the Internet, a Super Bowl commercial embarrasses minimum-wage workers and the Republican candidates for president embarrass themselves.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Robert Scheer connects the dots on surveillance, the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership could break the Internet, a Super Bowl commercial embarrasses minimum-wage workers and the Republican candidates for president embarrass themselves.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Truthdig columnist says, “People don’t want to be occupied and they’re not going to stop until we leave.” Also: The best banned books, The Intercept’s digital bodyguard and why the war in Syria is probably not legal.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The columnist says, “People don’t want to be occupied and they’re not going to stop until we leave.” Also: The best banned books, The Intercept’s digital bodyguard and why the war in Syria is probably not legal.

Due to the inconspicuous nature of e-books, “Mein Kampf” seems to be in everyone’s hands these days; scientists have created an algorithm that can predict whether a book will be a best-seller; working in the arts can lead to high levels of happiness. These discoveries and more after the jump.

Physicists have found evidence in simulations that the universe is quite possibly a projection; the latest Edward Snowden leak reveals the NSA uses Google cookies when determining whom to hack; meanwhile, the National Library of Norway is digitizing all of its books and making them free to read online. These discoveries and more after the jump.

Peter Richardson and Chris Hedges took home the first and second place trophies, respectively, in the online critic category at the L.A. Press Club’s Sixth Annual National Entertainment Journalism Awards on Sunday.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: An intimate portrait of new journlism’s banner carrier, how the shutdown affected people of color, lying liars and the economics of mendacity, the Green Party responds to the 60 percent of Americans calling for a third party and The Mantle’s Shaun Randol on Africa and super-independent publishing.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: An intimate portrait of new journlism’s banner carrier, how the shutdown affected people of color, lying liars and the economics of mendacity, the Green Party responds to the 60 percent of Americans calling for a third party and The Mantle’s Shaun Randol on Africa and super-independent publishing.

These four books are written in the shadow of the suspicion that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves—concerning hard work, opportunity, meritocracy, achievement and social mobility—somehow no longer pertain.

Sunday would be Ernest Hemingway’s 114th birthday. More than anyone, he cleaned out the stuffy British conventions that clogged American writing in the 1920s and allowed the next generation to find their own voices.

Whenever conservatives are in this sort of pensive mood, they repair to the thought of the philosopher whom Jesse Norman, a Conservative member of the British Parliament, labels “The First Conservative,” the subtitle of his new book on Edmund Burke.

This book’s vision of how things went bad over the past generation covers such diverse topics as the fast food-obesity nexus, the loss of localism, the end of cheap oil, the housing collapse and, above all, the death of trust.

Kristine Barnett home-schooled her autistic son Jake to “lean into his passions.” She managed not only to mainstream him into kindergarten, but also did the same for many other autistic kids in the learning center she ran out of her garage.

People who manufacture nothing and bet on everything control the financial destinies of everyone else—and they make stupendous amounts of money doing it. Because, as Les Leopold writes in his book, “Making a million an hour means never having to say you’re sorry.”

A new book examines the House and Senate through the evolution of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and “Congress comes across as the nation’s grandfather: antiquated, inconsistent, as slow-moving as it is dull-witted.”

“Daily Rituals: How Artists Work,” which describes the routines of more than 150 creative people, including playwrights, composers, painters and writers, is a compact, quirky and frequently delightful book.

Politico’s piece on New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson implied she was a “bitchy woman character”; fossil fuels may never be depleted and this could be the best and worst thing to happen; meanwhile, violence is less rampant on YouTube than on television programs. These discoveries and more after the jump.

Twelve years before Jackie Robinson began dismantling baseball’s racial barriers, an integrated team of five whites and six blacks played in Bismarck, N.D., and went on to win the national semipro championship.

The details about the courts at Guantanamo Bay have remained sketchy. Until now, as a new book explains how a small group of Bush-era political appointees developed a parallel justice system designed to ensure a specific outcome.

“The ways capitalism works and does not work,” Robert McChesney writes in his new book, “determine the role the Internet might play in society. ... The problem is that [Internet] celebrants often believe digital technology has superpowers over political economy.”

Many of the adults interviewed by author Emily Bazelon “could access, with riveting clarity, a memory of childhood bullying. … These early experiences of cruelty were transformative, no matter which role you played in the memory reel.”

Nick Turse’s book about the Vietnam War exposes the sickness of the hyper-masculine military culture, the intoxicating rush and addiction of violence, and the massive government spin machine that lies daily to a gullible public and uses tactics of intimidation, threats and smear campaigns to silence dissenters.

Good and evil are inseparable in history: “Liberal democracy prospered because of an accommodation with racial humiliation,” writes Ira Katznelson in “Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time.”